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SMALL Business Saturday – the nationwide campaign that promotes the UK’s five million small businesses – has announced its fifth anniversary campaign.

The event, which promotes small businesses around the UK, will culminate on Saturday, December 2.

Last year, Helen Bailey and her mum Liza, who run Seaside Florist in Rails Lane, Hayling Island, were listed in Small Business Saturday UK’s Small Biz 100.

Helen said they were looking forward to taking part once again and she encouraged more businesses to sign up.

She said: ‘It is brilliant because it highlights all the small businesses that are right here on our doorstep.

‘I’m a big believer in the scheme and it would be good if more businesses signed up.’

Michelle Ovens MBE, director of Small Business Saturday UK, said: ‘Over the last five years, Small Business Saturday has had a tangible economic impact on small businesses around the country.

‘We have a growing and highly-engaged network of small business owners who recognise the benefit of getting involved and making Small Business Saturday work for their own companies and in their own communities. Our aim this year is to get even more businesses around the UK to experience that effect.’

Events will be planned throughout the UK in the run-up to and on Small Business Saturday itself, including the return of the annual nationwide bus tour, details of which will be announced later in the year and the annual search for the Small Biz 100, the small businesses to be profiled each day in the 100 days leading up to December 2.

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses, four in every five local authorities and millions of consumers around the country now get involved with the campaign each year.

Spend on the day has risen by more than £249m between 2013 and 2016, an increase of 53 per cent.

Last year an estimated £717m was spent with small businesses across the UK on the day itself.